The Crows

Robbers, thugs and miscreants, The Crows are a rough band of vaguely aligned criminal elements in several large cities of the Empire. Originally a group of actual Kenku, the standards have dropped and now any race can be a Crow and band together with like-minded scumbags to snatch coinpurses and kidnap noble ladies for ransom. The current leader is a grim Dwarf named Ghoborr, a one-eyed man who has replaced the missing orb with a ball of obsidian. Like actual crows, they are always up to something, and seem to favor needlessly complicated schemes for questionable gains. Aggressive, ignorant and arrogant, Crows often find themselves at odds with the other bottom-feeder gangs like the Past Lives and the Red Backs.

Identifiers:

Crows are usually festooned with tattoos, but often only in black and white; they favor black clothing even when not engaged in behavior that they want to do without being seen, which may be a rare time for many of them. Their actual symbol is a black crow with wings spread in a tilted oval, but many variations are seen including a standing crow in a teardrop and a simplistic stick bird, almost like a heiroglyph.

Structure

Small gang-groups united by family ties, with honorary membership for in-laws and high-performing henchmen. Generally autonomous but will band together with a fury to punish anyone who threatens one of the groups. Internecine fighting is common and Ghoborr's 'leadership' is tenuous at best.

Public Agenda

The Crows seek to advance themselves as a real power in the slums of the cities where they are found. They lack some of the panache and style of the bigger or older criminal orgs, but they have a lot of spunk and are eager to show they are the true men of will. They have run afoul of the Steel Reciters a few times, and actively seek to thwart that group where possible; the reciters, for their part, find the Crows too insignificant to bother with any kind of organized response.

corvi in pluviam (Rain on Crows)

Type

Illicit, Gang